Howdy Ags!

I hope you all had a happy and safe New Years! To say that 2015 was the biggest year to date for Middle Tennessee A&M Club would be an understatement. We hosted our Fightin’ Texas Aggies TWICE within six weeks. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Twice. In six weeks.

We learned a lot from our first experience during the Vandy game. Ironically, we had bowl game crowds for the Vandy game and closer to regular game crowds for the Bowl game. However, that’s understandable given the fact that, again, there were less than six weeks difference between the two games. And, of course, holiday travel was probably an issue given how big Nashville goes for New Years Eve. Nonetheless, we hosted thousands of Aggies here in Nashville, and I could not be prouder of us all for doing so.

Huge thanks to The Association of Former Students for their work to secure our Midnight Yell location as well as Rock Bottom Brewery for the Battle of the Bands. Even more, though, for your friendship, support and guidance. I’m going to miss seeing you guys!

To every single Aggie who gave their time at the Second Harvest Food Bank… THANK YOU. When I was contacted by Louisville about it, I never doubted we’d step up. From what I understand, we had one of the biggest groups of “opposing team” fans to show up since they started doing the bowl service project. You all ROCK.

Thank you to Aggieland Outfitters for coming up and joining us again… Thank you for the t-shirts that got handed out at Aggie HQ day of the game, being our electricity at Yell, and for being the biggest supporter of Aggies across the country. Come back soon!

Thank you to Melanie Chandler ’88 and Andrew Peercy ’03 for working with Limelight to have that amazing venue as our Aggie HQ (FYI — the hangup on start time and the buffet was a management miscommunication at the venue, not anything anyone with our group did or didn’t do.)

Thank you to the Yell Leaders who showed up early to Yell and took pictures with a lot of Aggies, and then came by Limelight… thank you for helping make this experience special.

I am sure I missed someone, and to anyone I missed… thank you just the same. Without all of you we wouldn’t have had the super successful events that we had.

We lost the game, and, yes, that was disappointing. But the Aggie Spirit was alive and well in Music City last week, and for me that is enough. My pride as an Aggie does not come from our results on the field; it comes from so much more… like looking around a room, stadium, parking lot or wherever and seeing the Aggie Family come together.

Our next big event on the calendar will be Aggie Muster on April 21st. We’ve already begun planning it, so mark your calendars now! When/if other events come up between then and now, I will absolutely keep you all posted.

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.

Denise Mattox ’03